Elysian Park--The robins are back, it’s supposed to rain here in Los Angeles today, and Denzel Washington has a crappy movie out…it must be spring! The Seattle Mariners officially welcomed pitchers and catchers yesterday, and the rest will be following this week…so thus the 2012 baseball season has begun! Yes, yes, it’s early and a ball won’t be thrown in anger for at least another 6 weeks, but I can’t wait to start talking about baseball again. Unfortunately here in Los Angeles, despite having a Cy Young winner and an MVP runner-up (to a cheater), the talk right now is who own the Dodgers (owns…owns...). Usually with these things I just make up a bunch of cartoony names–Richie Rich, Bruce Wayne, Uncle Scrooge, Daddy Warbucks–but reality is proving more comical, and nobody can beat the laughs Frank McCourt provided Dodger fans. Did I say laughs? I meant tears and rage. Here’s a brief list of some of the final candidates to make a official bids…sorry to be so Angelin0-centric today, but you Met fans may want to pay attention as some of these names may be popping up on your radar soon.

Well, they look like they could fit in here.

Steve Cohen & Arn Tellum: How about that, first name on here has already dropped $20 mil on the Mets. That’s just pocket change to this guy…but frankly I don’t want hedge fund managers and sports agents running either the country or my baseball team.

Jared Kushner: I don’t know if this guy thinks he hit a triple or not, but he really was born on third base. His family is super rich Jersey real estate folk, he’s the son-in-law of Donald Trump, he went to Harvard after his dad donated 2.5 million to the school, but he also was a player in the Boston real estate market…which makes him a little too much like McCourt, even if he actually does have money.

Stan Kroenke: Owns the Avalanche, the Nuggets, a professional Lacrosse team (who knew?), two soccer teams (one professional, Arsenal, the other is the Rapids of the MLS), and of course the Rams. His bid should be dismissed just to avoid any temptations to bring the Rams back to L.A.

Mark Heisley: The Chicago Billionaire bought the Vancouver Grizzlies in 2000 promising to make the team a success there…then promptly moved them to Memphis a year later. Memphis is known for its indigenous grizzly bear population, so the move made as much sense as, say, calling a desert city’s basketball team the Lakers, or a trolley-less town’s baseball team the Dodgers.

Angelinos were never very good at dodging trolleys.

Joe Torre & Rick Caruso: One once turned an idealist young man named Happy Ward into the bitter and seething curmudgeon he is today. The other is the developer behind popular Los Angeles outdoor malls the Grove and the Americana, both of which feature dancing fountains, Apple stores, and condo units for everyone who has ever dared to dream of living upstairs from a Genius Bar and likes hearing the same water-synched Frank Sinatra songs blasting outside their window every hour. This might actually work out well, as Dodger Stadium could make for the next urban shopping destination, and since both the Americana and Grove also have running trolleys to cart some shoppers around, while the foolish pedestrians actually have to…take some kind of evasive maneuver to get out of their way.

Magic Johnson & Stan Kasten: Definitely the popular choice, for everybody wants a Magic Johnson on their side, while Bud Selig would love to see the familiar Kasten (former President of the Braves, then tapped to run the Nationals when they moved to Washington) in there after the McCourt horror. Johnson has actually owned the minor league Dayton Dragons, and once had a share in the Lakers, until he sold it to…

Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong: The richest man in Los Angeles, which of course is saying something, and the winning bidder will probably have him on their side. His 7 billion was made not through nepotism, construction deals and shopping malls, but by developing cancer fighting nanobot technology. Okay, I sort of made that last part up…sort of. At any rate, who better to find and cut out the cancer of the Dodgers than this guy?

Grote2DMax: If I can make Rex O’Rourke the New York Giants’ owner, how about our man tomorrow running the Dodgers?

West Coast Craig reports from Hollywood with an endearingly laid back style. A happily married father of two little boys, WCC has an avocado tree in his yard, plays the hot corner in a "Valley" hardball league and always manages to take cool sports-related mini road-trips, often with his immediate clan. He hails from Oneonta, NY but has been "So very L.A." for twenty years, so his sports teams are the Yankees AND the Dodgers, the Pittsburgh Steelers, the L.A. Lakers and the Colorado Avalanche/Quebec Nordiques. WCC loves bacon-wrapped hotdogs and can touch his heel and his ear... with his hand.

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Sam’s-A-Fan

I don’t know why, but WCC getting frustrated with Angelinos and telling them that it’s “Owns,” possessive, somehow reminds me of Lionel Twain telling the great Sidney Wang to use his prepositions and articles?

Cuban is actually the most popular choice, but apparently his bid didn’t make the cut…or it was somehow “misplaced” in Selig’s office.

Sam’s-A-Fan

My sister’s kids, aka my Chicago nieces, were bummed that Selig manipulated the process to keep Cuban from getting the Cubs. Although they are hopeful about the new ownership doing what is necessary to exorcise the ghost of the goat.

Anonymous

I think Selig is confused that a Cuban is trying to buy these teams and move them to Havana.

How dumb is it that in order to get around some legal hurdles in owning the Rams, he had to transfer ownership of his Denver teams…to his son…and that satisfied Goodell enough to allow it. That’s some blue-blood logic there.

Ram Rules

Stupid, stupid, stupid. This is also their reason that Cuban will never get a team. Cuban wants to win on the field, kroenke wants to win on the stock price and the real estate.

The leagues don’t want owners who are personally invested in performance in large markets especially in baseball because of the all too important league profit sharing program. The ownership of the mariners, pirates, marlins, rays etc would block it because if Cuban spends too much money on the field then there isn’t a surplus to pass around to all the small market teams.

Anonymous

Joe Torre doesn’t need to own a baseball team. What he needs is a good punch in the teeth.

First order of the Dodgers’ owner’s business.. bring back the bacon wrapped hot dog carts. I DIDN”T say bring them INTO the stadium.. because that would RUIN them… i said.. bring the carts back out… as in.. let them do their artery clogging business in their pure state.. outside the stadium.

And sorry to miss chiming in on Cheesy’s column yesterday but i was ACTUALLY in Boston. I’d like to report.. that NY is STILL better. 🙂 Sam.. i’d be up for the hockey slapshot duty.. tho i can’t skate for very long… weak ankles. No worries though.. i’d make quick work of taking someone’s teeth out with a slapshot or high stick.

Apologies to all, especially The Public Professor, Cheesy Bruin and West Coast Craig. We were stuck in the vacuum that is Las Vegas for three days. You can gamble your life away but you can’t get on the internet for less than two card games worth per hour… Disgusting place.